Hamshen region and Hamsheneese people

PART 1: A Unique Land
PART 2: The People of Hemşin
PART 3: Migrations
PART 4: Çamhhemşin
PART 5:The Main Valley

PART1: A Unique Land

On a rare clear day, the coast between Pazar and Ardeşen offers an unforgettable panorama of the Kaçkar Range. Lush forested hills, covered with the ubiquitous tea plantations and scattered farmhouses, ascend by degrees to a soaring range of snow-capped peaks. The black horn of the Kaçkar (3937 meters) can be seen towering above the snowline, trailed to the west by the grouped peaks of the Tatos (3560) and the Verçenik (3711). These are some of the highest spots that can be seen at sea level anywhere on earth, rivaled only by a few points on the Andes and in New Guinea. Mark your bearings at the spot where the torrential Fırtına River flows into the sea just outside Ardeşen. The highway bridge over the river offers the best unobstructed panorama of the Kaçkar range from the coast. Aptly, it is also the turnoff point to enter the extraordinary world of the Hemşin valleys.

During your climb up the Hemşin this river will be your constant companion-a scattered torrent crisscrossing the broad valley base here, a gushing, cascading waterfall in the forest depths or an icy streamlet trickling from under the great Kaçkar glacier. Its persistent roar is one of the defining features of the Hemşin experience.
"Hemşin / Hamshen", a word of obscure origin, is used in eastern Black Sea as a term for the highlands. Hemşin proper is the large triangular region on the northern slopes of the Kaçkar massif drained by the Firtına and its subsidiaries. It is a unique country, a strange environment shaped by two extreme features of its geography: rain and inaccessibility.

It is, by a wide margin, the wettest part of Turkey. It gets as much as 250 days of rain per annum (compared to an average of 170 in 'rainy'
Rize), and a yearly precipitation of up to five meters in some places. The result is a natural flora of astonishing wealth and diversity; a 'tropical' luxuriance one would not normally expect this far north on the globe.
The Kaçkar Mountains are practically impassable, barring access to Hemşin on the south. Unlike the rest of the Black Sea littoral, the north side, too, is far too steep and forested to allow the easy penetration of coastal settlers. As a result, the region is almost totally isolated, and has remained so through the ages. Both the Byzantine and Ottoman states made only token efforts to assert their authority over Hemşin; the coastal Laz clans were never able to push far inland in their perpetual fight with the highlanders; the Valley Lords who dominated the rest of the region in Ottoman times never managed to gain a foothold in Hemşin.
 

MORE ARTCICLES ABOUT HAMSHEN: Hemsin folk architecture, Hemsin folk architecture,  İkizdere, Festival time at Ayder, An alpine pasture touching the clouds Pokut , Journey to Ayder, Mount Kaçkar, Rhododendrons,  The coast of Black Sea, As warm as childhood memories Wood, Byways of the Black Sea region, Green on the Rampage Firtina Valley